Refusing to Back Down : Northridge’s Snyder Keeps Diving Despite Years of Chronic Pain

The best--OK, only--diver for Cal State Northridge in the NCAA qualifying meet this weekend has been in a pool only once in the past month.

Make that twice--if you include a recent photo session when Becky Snyder gingerly took a few dives, none of which were close to what she hopes to pull off starting today in the Zone E meet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

“I don’t even know if I’m going to make it through the meet,” said Snyder, a sophomore who has a chronically sore back. “It hurts to walk.”

If Snyder, 19, succeeds in the three events--one- and three-meter springboard and platform--she must again ignore the back pain that has enveloped her since 1988.

“She’d rather be in a little pain and compete than stop and rest,” Northridge Coach Roland King said. “She still has a chance to compete in nationals because of the way she is psychologically.”

But sometimes pain wins.

Snyder cried in the locker room the day before she left for the qualifying meet, which ends Sunday and sends seven out of 60 women to the NCAA championships next weekend. She nearly told her coach to forget about packing and call the whole thing off.

But she went ahead and pulled herself into the pool.

“It gets worse and worse,” she said, “yet I have to practice these dives. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

Snyder and soreness began to exchange calling cards when she was 8.

A fledgling gymnast, Snyder was demonstrating newly acquired knowledge of a back handspring. She got lost in mid-air after doing a series, came crashing down and broke her left arm.

“I knew then what I was getting myself into,” she said.

A doctor saw Snyder when she was 14--after several years of bumps, bruises and breaks--and gave her some thoughtful advice.

“The doctor said quitting gymnastics wouldn’t be the end of the world,” Snyder said. “I took the hint.”

Diving seemed like a natural transition. It offered similar flips, somersaults and twists--with a softer landing.

The diving board itself posed a hazard when Snyder was 16. She was in the middle of a back tuck off the one-meter board when she struck herself above the forehead. Give Snyder a couple of seconds, and she can still find the indentation in her head.

Nevertheless, Snyder adapted to diving with amazing quickness, winning two national championships at the club level in four years.

But as the injuries began to mount, so did her desire to take off for a year.

She left Northridge after her freshman season, when she was the Pacific Coast Swimming Conference champion in the one- and three-meter events, and enrolled at Westmont College near Santa Barbara, a more logical choice than it seemed. Her great-grandmother, Ruth Kerr, was one of the founders of the college. Eight of Snyder’s family members had attended the school.

“She had it in her blood to at least give it a try,” King said.

Snyder enjoyed herself socially, but there wasn’t a diving team at Westmont, which didn’t stop her from another injury. She broke her right ankle while diving on her own at UC Santa Barbara, leaving a surgical scar that is plainly visible.

Snyder longed to dive. She especially wanted to nail her specialty, the 205 C, a backward two-and-a-half somersault, during competition.

She returned to Northridge last semester and has reached NCAA qualifying marks in all dual meets she entered.

Her tender back, which requires twice-weekly therapy, may, like Westmont, be another family legacy.

“My grandma told me the other day that there’s a history of back problems in our family,” Snyder said.

The back problem may be persistent, but diving has helped Snyder shed the shy, serious, quiet demeanor of her mid-teens. Last summer, on a whim, Snyder consumed an entire peanut-butter pie.

And is that a tattoo of a snake on her left ankle?

It’s fake, courtesy of her 10-year-old niece, but it gets the point across.

Snyder has changed.

“Diving’s taught me to be aggressive,” she said. “It’s given me a lot more poise and confidence.”